140 THE DAWN OF MIND. 



Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, the New 

 Hebrides, and the Coral Islands of the Pacific. 

 Known in China, they are scattered broad-cast 

 throughout Japan, and the same is true of America, 

 Mexico, and Peru. If a child playing with a toy 

 spade is a proof that it is a child, a nation working 

 with stone axes is proved to be a child-nation. Er- 

 roneous conclusions may easily be drawn, and indeed 

 have been, from the fact of a nation using stone, but 

 the general law stands. Partly, perhaps, by mutual 

 intercourse, this use of stone became universal ; but it 

 arose, more likely, from the similarity in primitive 

 needs, and the available means of gratifying them. 

 Living under widely different conditions, and in every 

 variety of climate, all early peoples shared the in- 

 stincts of humanity which first called in tlie use of 

 tools and weapons. All felt the same hunger ; all had 

 the instinct of self-preservation ; and the universality 

 of these instincts and the commonness of stone led 

 the groping Mind to fasten upon it, and make it one 

 of the first steps to the Arts. A Stone Age, thus, was 

 the natural beginning. In the nature of things there 

 could have been no earlier. If Mind really grew by 

 infinitely gradual ascents, the exact situation the 

 theory requires is here provided in actual fact. 



The next step from the Stone Age, so far as further 

 appeal to ancient implements can guide us, is also 

 exactly what one would expect. It is to a better Stone 

 Age. Two distinct grades of stone implements are 

 found, the rough and the smooth, or the unground 

 and the ground. For a long period the idea never 

 seems to have dawned that a smooth stone made a 

 better axe than a rough one. Mind was as yet un- 



